Atheist bus campaign enjoys record day on JustGiving
Howard Lake | 22 October 2008 | Blogs
The Atheist Bus Campaign, an appeal by the British Humanist Association to fund posters on the side of London buses, has broken the record on online giving site Justgiving for the most money raised in the shortest time.
The campaign went live at midnight on 21 October 2008, aiming to raise £5,500. This would pay for posters on 30 buses across the capital for four weeks with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
It reached its total after just 10 hours at 10.06. Donations included £1,000 and £500 donations.
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Here is the Justgiving graph showing the rise in income throughout the first day.
Money is still coming in. As I publish this, the total stands at £64,385.
Traffic to the Justgiving page has been helped considerably by news coverage on The Guardian, BBC News, and The Register sites. The story also has 69 diggs on digg.com.
Justgiving promise to share some insights into the success of the campaign. They’ve just announced the one blog alone has driven more donors than all the posts on Twitter combined.
As the Justgiving blog commented: “Whatever you believe, it certainly shows the power of online fundraising”.
A quirky appeal, good PR and a good online donations partner show what can be achieved by organisations large and small.
WATCH: Richard Dawkins – all aboard the Atheist Bus Campaign
Editor’s update
The original bus image had to be changed due to a rights issue over the photo. For a while a free image generator tool was available that let you create any text to appear on the side of the bus.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.